Thoughts from the interface of science, religion, law and culture

After spending several years touring the country as a stand up comedian, Ed Brayton tired of explaining his jokes to small groups of dazed illiterates and turned to writing as the most common outlet for the voices in his head. He has appeared on the Rachel Maddow Show and the Thom Hartmann Show, and is almost certain that he is the only person ever to make fun of Chuck Norris on C-SPAN.

EVENTS

Santorum: College is Evil

What happens when the already crazy Rick Santorum does an interview with the even crazier Glenn Beck? He has to turn the crazy up to 11. Not only is Satan attacking America, but now going to college is all part of Obama’s evil plan to corrupt the nation’s youth.

“I understand why Barack Obama wants to send every kid to college, because of their indoctrination mills, absolutely,” he said. “The indoctrination that is going on at the university level is a harm to our country.” …

Santorum told Beck that “62 percent of kids who go into college with a faith commitment leave without it,” but failed to say where he found that figure.

Yes, knowledge and education undermines your faith because your faith is unsupported. And if you think that’s a good reason not to send your kids to college, I say knock yourself out. Feel free to confine your progeny to a ghetto of ignorance. Just more misology from the Christian right.

Oh, and he was called by God:

His wife, Karen, also talked with Beck and said that her husband entered the race because it was God’s will.

“I did always feel in my heart that God had big plans for Rick,” she said. “Eventually it was there, tugging at my heart. … When Obamacare passed, that was it. That put the fire in my belly.”

Perhaps a mandatory trans-vaginal ultrasound would figure out what caused that problem.

Santorum shouldn’t have to worry too much about a “college education,” at least not in the US.

There is now a lot of pressure to pass through as many students as possible because somehow maximizing the number of paper diplomas will prove that we have an “educated” workforce.

As a result, there is more and more pressure for programs at our smaller public institutions are watering down and diluting their standards so that kids pass their classes just for showing up and doing busy work.

Pretty soon, kids will be able to graduate from college at 22 years of age with what the Europeans and East Asians consider a good, solid middle school education!

And if you think that’s a good reason not to send your kids to college, I say knock yourself out.

Let’s not forget the kids who are victims of their parents hatred of reason and secular universities. It’s one thing to concede the parents’ right to act-out like this, but we should also concede the millions of lives which are negatively marginalized given this attitude within the base Santorum targets his marketing towards.

I grew up in an environment in the 1970s where Santorum’s perspective was predominately held. It wasn’t that parents mostly forcefully prevented their kids from getting a legitimate college education or even refused to finance it, but instead that they continually preconditioned their kids to choose to not attend college or instead choose to go to their denomination’s college, where most kids last only a year or two. Even those who did venture out to secular universities had a high drop-out rate as well given the societal conditioning that not only failed to socially prepare them for higher learning remote from the parental homestead, but had them fearing they’d be ostracized from their community of believers if they did so.

I’m sure there is a 62% shaped hole in Rick’s ass from where he pulled that number out.

A likely source has been tracked down by the TFN Insider blog. Good news for Santorum: the correct number is 64%; he was low. Bad news for Santorum: the number is for “decline in attendance in religious services”, not for a complete loss of faith commitment. Worse news for Santorum: the number is higher still for kids who didn’t go to college (76%).

Not quite pulled out of his backside, though. Just completely misrepresented.

Everyone should home school their kids and forbid them from attending secular universities, which only serve to confuse the mind, weaken the faith and ultimately seek to defeat God’s orderly plan for our lives in this world. It is sadly already the case that shockingly few people any longer accept such truths that used to be obvious to all, such as cold being God’s way of telling us to burn more Catholics. This is over-the-top secularism at its worst.

… Asked by Stephanopoulos on Sunday about the “indoctrination” comment, Santorum defended the remark, arguing that conservatives are “singled out” and “ridiculed” at most American colleges.
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“I mean, you look at the colleges and universities,” Santorum said. “This is not something that’s new for most Americans, is how liberal our colleges and universities are and how many children in fact are – look, I’ve gone through it. I went through it at Penn State.”
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“You talk to most kids who go to college who are conservatives, and you are singled out, you are ridiculed, you are — I can tell you personally. . . I went through a process where I was docked for my conservative views. This is sort of a regular routine. You know the statistic . . . that 62 percent of kids who enter college with some sort of faith commitment leave without it. This is not a neutral setting.”
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“And one of the things that I’ve spoken out on and will continue to speak out is to make sure that conservative and more mainstream, common-sense conservative and principles that have made this country great are reflected in our college courses and with college professors…

Apparently he wants affirmative action for the content of courses, rather than the participants. It’s interesting how quickly conservatives will latch onto relativism when they perceive it is in their interest.

Santorum has a BA, MBA, and JD from public universities in Pennsylvania.

Here is my translation of Santorum’s remarks –

“I went to college on the taxpayer dime. Now I am a millionaire with powerful political connections. I’d be lucky to be an employed welder if I hadn’t gone to college. My buddy Rush went to college too. And he grew up privileged because a lot of his relatives went to college AND law school, like me.

But here’s the problem, kids. In order to advance myself in a reptilian way, I now claim to adhere to a reality-denying ideology. We claim to ‘follow the Bible literally’ while ignoring and misinterpreting it, we claim that we can fund a huge military and constant unjustified war without taxes, we claim that doing this is will lead to ‘economic growth’, and virtually all us deny one or more of AGW, HIV/AIDS, biological evolution, cigarettes/health problems, limited supply of fossil fuels, and benefits of vaccination. Plenty of us deny every single one of these things.

Hell, I call myself a Catholic, and I deny a ton of stuff that even the pope himself says I shouldn’t deny.

We advocate wastefulness that would make eighteenth century dandies and drunken sailors think twice. We advocate driving cars that require a ridiculous amount of fuel to get where you are going, more or less solely for the absurdist gesture of burning more fuel. We advocated making yourself fat and sick by over-consuming convenience foods, and we angrily condemn any “nanny government” types who try to let you know that you don’t have to. We advocate that you live in an oversized but poorly built McMansion that you can’t afford and blow a vast amount of money and precious resources keeping the thing like an oven in winter and like refrigerator in summer. And by the way, if you don’t live like this, we encourage our more belligerent and deranged followers to go on and on about how they want to kill you.

And the problem is, kids, if you go to college, there might be some ‘biased liberal professors’ there who teach what they call ‘science’. And that might cause you to question some of our commands. Because frankly, kids, we’re not just destroying the country you’ll grow up in, we’re reaching out to see if we can destroy the whole damn biosphere. And we’ll react with the kind of crazed rage that would put a mother bear defending her cubs to shame if you question it, let alone try to interfere with it.

This was playing itself out in the pages of The Chronicle For Higher Education a few years ago.

Conservative academics were feeling like there was liberal bias against them, that mostly liberals get hired for faculty positions and seemed to be favored for tenure and promotion and so forth.

Reading those articles, I was, like, “duh!”

Conservatives can’t do quality research based on empirical observations and make reasoned, logical analysis of the results of their research. If they could, they’d find out that their conservative views were wrong and they’d cease to be conservatives.

That is really the main beef that conservatives have with the “ivory tower elitists.” Reality contradicts their cherished beliefs again and again, and they get mad at the researchers for finding out the truth and at the instructors for teaching that truth to their kids.

Now it is possible to evaluate real data objectively and use conservative values to evaluate proposed policies based on whether the data shows that conservative goals can be achieved.

But by and large that isn’t what most conservatives want. They want to make up data because dealing with complicated reality is hard. And they want to continue to advocate policies even when those policies won’t even achieve the goals that they want because they really don’t care about the alleged “goals,” the policies are the ends not the means.

“And one of the things that I’ve spoken out on and will continue to speak out is to make sure that conservative and more mainstream, common-sense conservative and principles that have made this country great are reflected in our college courses and with college professors…

And remember, kiddies, that the Department of Truth that oversees the Fair and Balanced™ curriculum of your University is part of our Smaller Government™!

17 Feb 2012 – Santorum’s income in 2011 rose to $3.6m … WASHINGTON – Rick Santorum grew wealthy over his four years working as a corporate …

Santorum made 3.6 million USD last year. As a corporate consultant whatever that is at a law firm. It might be Newspeak for corporate lobbyist.

Without his three degrees including a law degree, he might have ended up working at Walmart or McDonalds.

What a flaming hypocrite.

wikipedia:

In March 2007 he joined Eckert, Seamans, Cherin & Mellott, LLC, where he primarily practiced law in the firm’s Pittsburgh and Washington, D.C. offices, providing business and strategic counseling services to the firm’s clients. In 2007, he joined the Board of Directors of Universal Health Services, a hospital management company based in King of Prussia, Pennsylvania.[1

I doubt he would be working at a law firm or on the board of a company with a high school diploma.

But by and large that isn’t what most conservatives want. They want to make up data because dealing with complicated reality is hard. And they want to continue to advocate policies even when those policies won’t even achieve the goals that they want because they really don’t care about the alleged “goals,” the policies are the ends not the means.

A case in point is Ed’s post above on the Utah GOP Mormon legislaturors war on birth control.

They just outlawed comprehensive sex ed in their public schools.

They know it will just lead to an increase in teenage pregnancy, children growing up in poverty, single mothers, and expanding welfare rolls.

They don’t care. It is more important for them to make a statement that sex is icky and evil so you should only do it with your spouse after marriage.

Let me first state I agree with you 100% regarding the article and your thoughts here. Santorum is fractally wrong in his thinking here. However, your title is incredibly sensational and reminiscent of Fox News. I only say this just because I don’t want anyone trying to say you’re putting words in Santorum’s mouth. Let his own idiocy speak for itself.

She apparently didn’t disapprove of abortion back in the 1980’s when she was living with her abortion-doctor boyfriend 40 years her senior (who was, but the way, the same doctor who delivered her in ~1960). Ewww!

“Perhaps a mandatory trans-prostrate ultrasound would figure out what caused that problem.”

TFTFY, Ed.

As I stated on another thread, I had a difference of opinion* with a Teatard this evening. Well, talking to someone who starts at, “Obama is a socialist and a traitor.”, you know that it will be a short conversation–if you’re having it with me. I felt slightly vindicated in that the first, “fuck you” was from him.

Yes, knowledge and education undermines your faith because your faith is unsupported. And if you think that’s a good reason not to send your kids to college, I say knock yourself out.

I’ve got to call “bullshit” on that one, Ed. If you decide, because of your pea-brained ideologies, that you’re going to compromise your kids’ educational opportunities then that’s child abuse. Parents do not own their kids and should not be allowed to make whatever stupid decisions for their kids that they want, or their religion tells them to. Children have rights as minors!!!

Not sure what that means but I’m guessing its not the study of miso somehow, right?

Hatred of reason or argument. Goes back to Plato. The etymology threw me off too. It was clear enough from context, but I thought that literally it must have been “hatred of words” or “study of hatred”.

Mind you, G.W. Bush may have hatred of words, and the study of hatred is probably a fine practical thing for Republican candidates.

Google News sent me to Fox News for an article on the MI primaries- while there I saw a poll on this.
Currently it’s at 58.33% for “Yes, the president wants to force all students to be educated by liberal elitists”.

Conservatives can’t do quality research based on empirical observations and make reasoned, logical analysis of the results of their research. If they could, they’d find out that their conservative views were wrong and they’d cease to be conservatives.

I disagree to an extent.

To the extent that you’re talking about David Barton and “Creation scientist” types you’re absolutely right. But I’ll submit that:

1. Not all conservatives fall into a mold that requires denying physical reality.

2. Many people, conservative and liberal alike, are perfectly capable of holding rational, evidence based beliefs in their primary field, but be susceptible to woo in other fields.

3. Not all fields fit into that framework. Indeed conservatives tend to be the majority (or at least a substantial plurality) in economics, accounting and business departments. Sure conservative politicians articulate ideas that don’t make sense, but there’s nothing inherent in conservatism that means one can’t become an accomplished economist.

How many otherwise highly educated liberals have you known that buy into anti-vax nonsense? Or anti-nuclear beliefs? Or for abetter example, look at the ranks of those who deny anthropogenic global warming. Studies have shown a higher than normal percentage of engineers among those who are “confident” that Global warming is not occuring or will not be a problem. It’s related to the idea that experts in one area tend to overestimate their expertise in other areas. It’s not as if these experts are incapable of designing a structure or designing an electrical system, they don’t believe that buildings stand because jesus holds them up, but they might well think they “know about things like this and Climate change science is a bunch of BS.”

There’s a much more interesting question as to conservative students though. That is Santorum’s assertion that he was, and he knows of students that have been “marked down” for conservative views.

The question i really have to ask is “what does this mean?”

There’s a certain element of parroting the teachers ideas back to them in any class. All teachers have slightly idiosyncratic ways of thinking about things and key to getting good grades is understanding that.

This enters the political realm. When I took anthropology in college we all knew the professor was deeply into fair trade, and preserving native cultures issues, so when we had papers assigned, I wrote mine from a more liberal perspective on that issue than I would normally take.

This does implicate some level of first amendment issues. If a teacher at a public university gives a student a poor grade because of a personal difference of opinion with a student when that opinion is not demonstrably connected to the subject, the teacher is in the wrong.

On the other hand, if the class is biology 101 and students insist that the professor is teaching heresy when they get to the unit on evolution and refuse to answer those questions, the professor is quite justified in giving them poor grades.

A case in point, my PhD thesis adviser in elementary particle physics was an old earth creationist and born again Christian who rejected the theory of evolution. That didn’t affect his competence in his field where he was a productive physicist, publishing several papers per year. Not surprisingly, he was also very conservative politically, being a member of the New York Conservative Party (New York Rethuglicans back then would be considered left wing pinko commies in today’s Rethuglican Party).

First time here, so lets see if I can get this blockquote thing right:

Ben P said:

Studies have shown a higher than normal percentage of engineers among those who are “confident” that Global warming is not occuring or will not be a problem.

I know why this might be. I think you’ll probably find that the Oil, Gas, Coal, Power and Chemical industries employ a shitload of engineers, and the logical conclusion of policy enacted to eliminate CO2 emissions necessitates the massive downsizing, if not complete elimination, of these industries (and their replacement with non fossil fuel based alternatives). This would lead to a massive reduction in engineering jobs of the type currently employed engineers are doing.

There’s a quote that goes something like:

It’s very hard to convince someone of something when his next paycheck depends on him not believing it